PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY form p-5 [vi-30-19 14c) THE Bulletin is published monthly by The New York Public Library at 476 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Subscription One Dollar a year, current single numbers Ten Cents. Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter, February 10, 1897, under Act of July 16, 1894. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized. Printed at The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue. June 1919, Volume 23, Number 6. BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS VOLUME 23 JUNE 1919 AN ARTICLE OF FAITH BY HILLER C. WELLMAN Librarian, City Library Association, Springfield, Mass. An address delivered before the graduating class of the Library School, NUMBER 6 M EMBERS OF THE LIBRARY SCHOOL AND GUESTS: I am going to pro pose to you to-day a fundamental article for a librarian's creed, and ask you to think of its bearing on a few of our after-the-war conditions. The creed or motto runs as follows: Let men in freedom seek the truth, and the truth will prevail. The thought is by no means original; Milton, Jefferson, and a host of others have said it, and said it better. But I want to bring out something of its relation to the library. The first application has to do with toleration. The most widespread, the saddest, and perhaps the most lasting result of war is hatred. Whole peoples have to be taught to hate, — it is a necessary instrument of warfare, and yet Hate is as hellish as murder The fact remains that now the war is over, the world is overstocked with munitions of war and perhaps most of all with hatred. A recent editorial in the Springfield Republican on the new value of old books, pointed out that scientists carefully distinguished between "systematic" error and "casual" error. Systematic errors are cumulative, while casual errors may run in either direction and in the long run tend to cancel each other. Much of what was written under the stress of war was inevitably subject to systematic error. The emotion kindled by the war of necessity colored not only our historical and political writing, but all our literature. Some libraries even banished from their shelves lives of the Kaiser or other books written before 1914, precisely because they were not written under its influence. War is not an appeal to reason, but an appeal to force; and it was natural and right that in the emergency of conflict men should write and read with the aim, not of carefully balancing pro's and con's, but to enforce with every pertinent fact and argument the cause which the nation knew to be just. But the war is won. We cannot forget - we would not forget - but we may dare a more reasoning and inquiring view; above all, we may hope to lay aside prejudice and hatred, trusting the truth to prevail. In this process of reconciliation, books are of great potency, and particularly the books written in happier years before the whole earth was plunged in passion. With such humane and genial books our shelves are filled, and through them our libraries may hope in a humble way to help toward the healing of the nations. The ideal of toleration is not merely of general application; it touches librarians closely because of its direct bearing on library censorship. I do not refer now to war-time censorship. It is the fashion to proclaim that libraries do not censor by excluding books; that since they can buy only a limited number of the books printed, they are bound to make a selection, and in rejecting one book and choosing another they are at most exercising only a mild censorship of selection. That sounds plausible. But you know, and I know, that with a book fund of several thousand, or even several hundred dollars, certain books are bought that could be spared; and if because of the contents or point of view we refuse to buy a moderate-priced book wanted by a number of readers, we are deliberately excluding it in the belief that it is not desirable reading for the public. Shall we not candidly admit that we do act as censors; and either that we want to act as censors, or else that in certain cases we are compelled to do so by public opinion? The question then is how far and in what directions this censorship should be exercised; or rather in what fields it should not be exercised, for I am not concerned now with those books-usually novels devoid of sincerity of purpose and overstepping the bounds of ordinary decency. In theory, at least, there will be found a good deal of assent to the proposition that controversial questions, scientific, political, social, or religious, should be represented fairly and with the arguments put forward by both camps. At |